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DeVos Waters Down Disclosure Requirements of Gainful-Employment Rule

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The Department of Education last week said it was further weakening disclosure requirements in the gainful-employment rule.

Under the new 2018 gainful employment disclosure template, career education programs would no longer be required to disclose median earnings data of graduates or charges for room and board. The template also allows those programs to list the job-placement rate from multiple accreditors.

Last year, weeks after saying she would launch a regulatory rewrite of the gainful-employment rule, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told those programs that they would have until July 2018 to disclose to prospective students information on graduate employment rates or typical graduate debt levels -- a year later than originally scheduled.

The Obama administration crafted the gainful-employment rule to hold career education programs accountable for producing too many graduates with student debt they couldn't repay. It tied access to federal student aid to performance on a debt-to-earnings metric. But additional transparency and disclosures to potential students were also significant components of the rule.